WP: The drone skills and tactics acquired from hands-on military service in Ukraine are expected to be implemented by the drug cartels, U.S. assessment warns

Vehicles owned by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel move through the Mexican town of El Terrero
Photo: WP

The rapidly accelerating use of drones among Latin American drug cartels will significantly complicate the Trump administration’s campaign to halt the flow of illicit narcotics into the United States and eliminate the criminal networks that produce and traffic them, according to a U.S. official familiar with an internal government assessment and others with knowledge of the matter, The Washington Post writes.

Of chief concern, these people said, is the continued exploitation of individuals with recent battlefield experience in the Russia-Ukraine war, a conflict that has featured near-continuous evolution in drone tactics and technology. The government assessment, which has not been previously reported, warns, too, that counternarcotics authorities in the U.S. and Mexico are dangerously unprepared for the challenges this shift will pose.

In recent years, Mexican cartels have stepped up their use of money and coercion to recruit people, chiefly from Colombia, who have returned from Ukraine and have sought to send their own “affiliates” there, officials said. They noted that the cartels are closely studying the use of alternating radio frequencies and other techniques to evade anti-drone jamming systems and procuring advanced drone models that can stay airborne longer and carry more explosives than the models they currently possess.

The skills and tactics acquired from hands-on military service in Ukraine are expected to be implemented by the cartels in the next several months, one of the officials said.

The drone revolution unfolding south of the U.S.-Mexico border will almost certainly undermine President Donald Trump’s war on drugs — a centerpiece of his administration that, despite a sprawling, deadly Pentagon campaign targeting alleged traffickers throughout the Western Hemisphere, has failed to reduce the amount of cocaine on American streets, as The Washington Post recently reported.

Drug-trafficking groups in Mexico already employ drones to circumvent authorities on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, using them to surveil enforcement operations and identify smuggling routes, officials said.

A U.S. official said the State Department and the Justice Department have addressed the issue with their Ukrainian counterparts.

A Mexican intelligence official acknowledged there is deepening concern about the proliferation of large drones that can haul explosives and contraband. At least one cartel possesses aircraft with six to eight propellers, allowing a drone to conduct hours-long flights and carry upward of 150 pounds, according to an intelligence document reviewed by The Post.

The Mexican intelligence official said one cartel sent personnel to China to purchase drones that can be equipped with rifles. It is believed the organization is learning how to operate the aircraft and waiting for the right opportunity to use them, the official said.

After returning from Ukraine, Colombian drone specialists are offered large sums of money and sometimes brought to Mexico to train large groups of “droneros,” or drone pilots, the Mexican official said.

One Colombian fighting in Ukraine told The Post that he estimates there might be as many as 100 of his countrymen in the southern city of Kherson alone. They’ve become such an integral part of the armed forces that the foreign recruitment center shared a message wishing Colombia a happy independence day this year, he said.

Like most Colombians, he was drawn to Ukraine by the promise of a much higher salary than he could have made back in his home country. After years fighting on the front lines of the war, including in assault units, he said he plans to take a drone piloting course — a relatively accessible two-month training session taught by Ukrainian troops in which participants learn to fly a drone and arm it with explosives.

Colombia itself has seen a sharp rise in the use of drones by armed groups in the country’s violence, a decades-long conflict between rival guerrilla groups with control over large swaths of the rural countryside, including cocaine-trafficking corridors.

To that end, U.S. and Mexican authorities anticipate that cartels will continue to refine their tradecraft and look for ways to avoid government counter-drone systems, officials said.

“We know the narcs have way more money than we do,” said the U.S. official involved in counternarcotics efforts. “What’s the next major problem we’re going to have? Drones are it.”

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